Hasta La Ideas

This labyrinth-like fashion store in Hangzhou, China, by 3Gatti Architecture Studio features a rotating toilet and a hidden love room “equipped with bar and condoms” (+ slideshow).

3Gatti Architecture Studio created a complex landscape of extruded cuboid volumes on the upper level and a similarly intricate topography on the ceiling of the floor below at the store, which is the first physical outlet for online fashion retailer D2C.

The architects liken the forms to rock forms generated by volcanic activity. “Volcanic Slab is an existing building slab reshaped with volcanic energy to accommodate two floors of retail space,” said chief architect Francesco Gatti.

Most intriguing – although unfortunately not shown in the photos – is a rotating, circular toilet, behind which is a hidden “love nest”.

“In case you want to go to the toilet the challenge ratio increases considerably,” the architects write. “Behind the door you will find a curved rubber-like wall impossible to pull or push but if you are smart enough you will discover that is the surface of a rotating cylindrical room. Sliding the wall will allow you to discover the hole-entrance where to go inside the circular space and the same hole if rotated again will make you discover before the toilet, after the sink and finally the entrance to the love room; a soft nest equipped with bar and condoms. I don’t need to say more.”

Back in the store itself, chunky cuboids that continue all the way to the floor are used as changing rooms and others that almost reach the ground house the cashiers. “If you enter inside the extruded fitting room the space will be red like hot lava stored inside the slab,” said Gatti.

Spotlights are dotted across the rough grey floor on the lower level, illuminating the white extrusions above.

A staircase ascends through a large hole in the slab to the upper level, where the concept is flipped upside-down and the volumes protrude from the floor instead.

On this floor shoppers have to navigate over a series of stepped blocks all at different heights.

The metal rails displaying the garments span over the white blocks, lit-up by more spotlights installed in the undulating grey ceiling.

Profiles of the volumes are visible around the edge of the store’s exterior. Glass walls surround both storeys so the thick slab dividing them appears to float.

3Gatti Architecture Studio has come up with a few experimental interior designs. The firm has completed a store in Shanghai with clashing concrete staircases that looks like an MC Escher drawing, and an office where meeting rooms and a cafe are housed in a red faceted volume.

Here’s the text sent to us by the designers:

Volcanic Slab – D2C flagship store in Hangzhou

D2C is a multi brand platform where to buy the most interesting international fashion brands on the internet and now also on a physical space, a challenging physical space. Volcanic Slab is an existing building slab reshaped with volcanic energy to accommodate two floors of retail space.

The concept is as simple as this but creates a very intricate and complex labyrinthine space that will challenge your shopping experience.

This simple idea creates a very strong identity of the shop; even coming from the street is possible to see immediately the reshaped slab on the building façade. This squared skyline is not only a façade decoration but you will notice immediately from the glass window that is actually the shape of the slab that will continue inside the store.

Entering from the ground floor will allow you to be under the squared slab, you will walk between the extruded volumes that come from the ceiling creating different functions depending on their shape and size; fitting rooms, cashier room, clothes or swing hangers areas or just simple screens and labyrinth walls that coming from the top never touch the ground.

Taking the stairs will allow you to go through the slab and understand its simple logic and identity; upstairs you will be able to walk on top of the volcanic formations, challenged in a continuous up and down of steps and cubes that actually serves as display area of the fashion products or in the biggest cases as fitting room. If you enter inside the extruded fitting room the space will be red like hot lava stored inside the slab.

In case you want to go to the toilet the challenge ratio increases considerably: behind the door you will find a curved rubber-like wall impossible to pull or push but if you are smart enough you will discover that is the surface of a rotating cylindrical room. Sliding the wall will allow you to discover the hole-entrance where to go inside the circular space and the same hole if rotated again will make you discover before the toilet, after the sink and finally the entrance to the love room; a soft nest equipped with bar and condoms. I don’t need to say more.

The post Volcanic Slab D2C flagship store
by 3Gatti Architecture Studio appeared first on Dezeen.

Rather than design a run-of-the-mill skyscraper for a new hotel in Xian, China, architects 3Gatti decided to put lots of smaller buildings on a gigantic set of shelves.

Houses and apartment blocks on the lower levels of the Shelf Hotel will contain hotel suites.

Office blocks will be placed nearer the top.

Two shelves will be omitted from the lower part of the tower, creating an elevated garden including a courtyard surrounded by restaurants.

The project is currently awaiting approval from the local authority.

Check out a hotel in the Netherlands that looks like a pile of houses here.

We’ve featured a few projects by Rome and Shanghai firm 3Gatti Architecture Studio – see them here.

Here’s some more explanation from 3Gatti Architecture Studio:

Shelf Hotel

This project is intended to be the the first contemporary building in the contemporary Xian; want to be an architecture in open dialogue with the rest of the world in a multicultural international architectural language and at the same time strongly attached to the Xian and Chinese traditions.

One main purpose of this design is to follow the needs of different inhabitant without loosing the power of a strong landmark building in the cityscape.

In the common buildings the design is a dam imposed by the architect to the mutating needs of the people and of the developing history of the city. This building wants to be an open matrix to be filled during time with the mutating expectations from a growing culture and society.This matrix will be the more expensive part of the building that of course is the structure, the only element very difficult to mutate during time.

The objects that will fill the matrix will be built following the different owners identities, functions and real estate needs in a more free and low cost construction methods.

Working 7 years as an architect in China I learned that the construction here follow very strictly and spontaneously the flow of economy without many constrains from regulations, planners and building managements.

Usually architects built objects where the integrity and personality is made by the beauty of the exterior shape and material, shapes and material that have to stay clean and unchanged till the end of the building life. That’s maybe possible in a country where the managements and regulations are very strict and conservative and where probably the economy is very slow creating no development acceleration.

Is not the case of China. Here all architects get frustrated because they can make pictures to their beautiful creations only in the first month life of the building, after that inhabitants start to put unwanted attachments to the building: advertising signs, volume extensions, additional decorations and other additions following their own living or business needs and personalities.

Our design want to make of this dynamic attitude of Chinese culture the real power of the building facade; so that every change during time will give not less but more beauty to the building look and overall concept.

Till the sixties it always have been a dream for architects to create an highrise building where to show the identities and personalities of each inhabitant instead of building an anonymous facade to represent the hundreds of people and business going on inside the building. This can be the right opportunity to realize this dream emphasizing the beauty of the collage aesthetics. If this was intended to be a design for our parents probably was better to empathize the deep meaning of a unique culture making and object with an unambiguous hidden spirit to be discovered by research and abnegation.

But this actually is a design oriented to the future and to the next generation like all works of responsible architects should be. Observing young people you will notice that they are looking for a life with a simultaneity of stimuli, they are used to live in an interactive environment with many short experiences instead of a unique deep unequivocal one. They are moving in masses naively, led by a revolutionary instinct towards the collective creation and without regards for personal creativity, I’m sure they are the true prophets, those who will guide us towards an amazing future.

This is a design for them, its a way to attract them speaking their own language. The design will show them a variety of different spaces, different facades, different cultural identities, different experiences. But instead of attracting them in the chaos of the city with its inhuman spaces, we will bring them in a natural and peaceful variety of environments where to learn about themselves, their own culture and the culture from their peers around the world. This building wants to represent their spirit of collective creation and the facade will literally represent this continuous and interactive flow of creations. This building wants to represent their spirit of collective creation and the facade will literally represent this continuous and interactive flow of creations.

One of the biggest problems to solve in this design was how to get rid of the building shadow on the neighbor residence buildings. Chinese regulation is very strict on this and don’t allow more than certain amount of shadow time cover every day. Our building is 100 meters tall and quite large. Thanks to software analysis we discover the critical point to be not too far from the building base where the shadow actually is not moving but is almost permanent all day long. We spontaneously solved this problem by rising the upper part of the volume so that the sun can reach exactly the critical area in need for more light. In this way we opened an opportunity for a large garden to be placed inside this forced gap. This garden will be the heart of the hotel together with the top roof garden where we placed a Chinese courtyard residence traditional typology (siheyuan).

Those green opportunities will be the location for special function related with the exhibition and research about Chinese traditional cultural activities such as calligraphy, tea and taiji together with Buddhist meditation and learning areas. Will be also the place where to grow vegetable and other special food in green houses and water pools.

Restaurants and lounge spaces will be also placed in those green areas and will be visible from the skylights and transparent floors of the below and upper hotel rooms. The green will be located in small amount in each double floor of the highrise, especially in the gaps between the object/houses that fills the slabs matrix structure.

The structure will be composed of pillars and inverted slabs every two floors. In this way is possible to take use of the space between the beams for different purpose like for storage spaces, soil for trees and green areas, pools, mechanical equipment and other functions adaptable to the space under the floor surface.

Most of the houses actually will not be completely autonomous volumes but will be aggregate together and divided only by apparent front gaps so not to waste habitable square meters.

In the ground floor the houses volumes will extend to the front area creating small plazas together with green walls of bamboo. Those will be small spaces in human scale so to be able to make people enjoy open air restaurant areas or outdoor activities.

We believe in this way to create a sustainable project that can last during the years developing its spirit from the ancient Chinese traditions to the future inevitable global culture.

Architecture firm: 3GATTI
Chief architect: Francesco Gatti
Project manager: Borja Gómez
Collaborators: Tyler Johnson, Karen Tang, John Jiang, Lisa Liu
Structural engineer: Jun Gang Sun
Client: Renhe Estate (Shaanxi Weizhi Group)
Location: Keji Road, Gaoxin district, Xian, China
Programme: Five star Hotel, Retail, Restaurants, Spa, Gym, Office, Parking, Green Park
Total area: 50,000 m²
Design period: December 2011

Materials: steel and reinforced concrete structure, bamboo, wood, recycled local stones, recycled gray bricks, recycled terracotta bricks, corrugated steel, glass

This faceted red volume in a Shanghai office, designed by 3Gatti Architecture Studio of Rome and Shanghai, houses two meeting rooms and a cafe.

Called A Red Object, the enclosure forms part of an office inside a former factory.

The project also involved inserting two mezzanine levels, coating much of the concrete interior in white resin, and installing a black reception desk and workbench around the stairwell.

Photographs are by Masato Kawano.

The information that follows is from 3Gatti Architecture Studio:

A red object
Conversion of an ex factory into a office building

Red and black are historically avant-garde colours. In the last century they represented bold uncompromising ideologies and artistic movements that combined ethical and cultural beliefs with innovative forms of expression.

These were the colours that represented a certain turbulence or tension towards the essence of objects whereas white represented a vacuum or void in which to collocate their significance or meaning.

A blank sheet of paper on which nothing has yet been written is white; once there is a text, the colour red is used to underline words. In a similar way and in a contemporary setting Francesco Gatti associates colours to the objects he designs.

To convert an ex factory in the centre of Shanghai, the Italian architect was given certain criteria to follow and final requirements to be met: there should be premises to be used as offices, versatile spaces, meeting rooms, a reception and a café.

Taking into account the height of the rooms, it was decided to divide the upper space into two mezzanine floors joined together by two bridge-corridors. In this way a neutral central void was created.

The use of white resin for the floors and epoxy applied directly onto the concrete makes the double height a perfect setting for the utility functions, all housed among objects resembling sculptures.

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A faceted red object contains two meeting rooms and a kitchen in its lower level. It is separated from the floor by an illuminated slice of void and it reflects onto the white resin. Other less startling sculptures, are the reception desk which lies in the bend of the banister of the stairs and another long belt-like surface which can be used as a working surface which leads the way into the central area.

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Programme: Two storeys office events open spaces, two meeting rooms, reception area, bar, special dress storage-exhibition room, storage room, server room.

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Architect: 3GATTI.COM ARCHITECTURE STUDIO
Chief architect: Francesco Gatti
Project manager: Ingrid Pu
Collaborators: Paola Riceci, Jessie Zheng, Candy Zhang, Vivian Husiyue, Ben Hou, Peter Ye, Sunny Wang, Chen Han Yi, Robin Feng
Contractor: K2Lab
Engineer: Jachy Yan
Client: Italia Servizi s.r.l.
Location: Jing An district, Shanghai, China.
Total area: 708 m²

Click for larger image

Materials:
ground floor: white resin
mezzanine: steel structure, concrete floor with transparent epoxy
red object: concrete and brick structure, wooden secondary structure, plasterboard skin with plexiglass windows
reception desk: steel structure, wooden skin with grey piano painting

See also:

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